THE OLD AND THE NEW, • 191 



charmed by the pictures of old-time trotters with the 

 driver laying back in a manner that suggested that the 

 reins must have had the strength of traces ? ^Ye no 

 longer believe in pulling to the half-mile pole, and then 

 riding home. The idea that it helps a horse's speed to 

 draw a man's weight on his under jaw is hardly a 

 reasonable one. In the old days, too, all the appliances 

 were coarse and heavy. The tracks were crude and 

 rough, and until twelve or fifteen years ago the seventy- 

 five pound sulky was concidered a " frail bark " indeed. 

 Xowall this is changed. The youngster is born and 

 grows lip mider control — he never knows absolute 

 freedom and therefore he never feels subjection. He 

 is taught at the time when teaching is easy, when he 

 is 3^oung, that he cannot oppose his strength to man's 

 strength, and hence there is no violent struggle for the 

 mastery, with its evil after effects on body and disposi- 

 tion. Before he is strong enough to make stubborn 

 resistance he has forgotten that there is anything to 

 resist. To go as he is guided and do as he is directed, 

 has become his natural habit. And then when he is 

 trained he is not asked to do work beyond his years 

 and strength. His whole early life is an inductional 

 course of education. His mouth is not made callous 

 and harsh, and he is not taught to regard his lessons in 

 trotting as a dreaded process of running the gauntlet 

 between two fires — the bit in front and the whip 

 behind. His harness and the thirty-eight or forty 

 pound sulky which he draws are so light, perfectly 

 fitted and balanced, that they seem a part of himself. 

 The artificial appliances on his legs and feet are noi 

 ponderous hinderances, but easy -fitting, fight and com- 



